Posts under ‘Shale Gas’

Reuters Staff: MARCH 13, 2018 (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

LNG IS THE FASTEST GROWING GAS SUPPLY SOURCE

(SOURCE: SHELL INTERPRETATION OF WOOD MACKENZIE Q4 2017 DATA)

By Clyde Russell

LAUNCESTON, Australia, March 13 (Reuters) – Crude oil is likely to spring to mind if one is asked to name a commodity where the United States is disrupting the market by becoming a swing producer and challenging traditional trade flows, especially in fast-growing Asian markets.

But it’s increasingly likely that the United States is about to play the same role in liquefied natural gas (LNG), as it ramps up production in an already well-supplied market.read more

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad. It is partly about NAM Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij BV., a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil each owning a 50% share in the company responsible for the earthquake blighted Groningen Gas Field and the consequential potential bill for untold billions in damages. The article discusses the similarity with recent earthquake activity in Oklahoma arising from shale oil and gas extraction.

Begins

Do the ‘shale farmers’ go after the Groningers?

The bottom trembles and walls tear in Oklahoma. Yes, that sounds familiar, and the cause is also: oil and gas extraction. Is a ‘Groningen scenario’ taking place in the US, including shutting down the taps? Then it quickly ends with low oil prices.

The damage will be viewed in November 2011 at a St. Gregory’s University building in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Photo: Hollandse Hoogte / AP | Associated Press

On Friday it was hit again in the US state of Oklahoma: an earthquake of 3.6 on the Richter scale. As far as known, this quake did not cause any damage, but that was different on Sunday 4 March. Then the places Enid and Breckenridge, 150 kilometers north of Oklahoma City, were hit twice in rapid succession by a quake with a force of 4.2.

‘Houses with cracks in the walls, doors that can no longer open or close. People reacted quite startled, ‘Mike Honigsberg tells us by telephone from Enid. Honigsberg is director of the Garfield County Emergency Management, a kind of crisis center for calamities such as large fires and nowadays also earthquakes. These are, as in Groningen, associated with the extraction of oil and gas.read more

Royal Dutch Shell is working with the private equity firm Blackstone Group on a $10 billion (£7.2 billion) bid for BHP Billiton’s US shale assets. The Anglo-Dutch oil group first expressed interest in the assets, some of which neighbour its own existing shale fields in the Permian basin, last month. It has now teamed up with the private equity giant to work on a joint offer, Sky News reported last night. Shell and Blackstone both declined to comment. Shell is seeking to expand its shale business, which it identified last year as a key growth opportunity, while BHP, the Anglo-Australian mining group, is looking to offload its underperforming shale division under pressure from the activist investor Elliott Management. BHP expects to receive initial bids in…read more

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Shell, the FTSE 100 oil behemoth, is plotting a $10bn (£7.3bn) joint takeover bid for the American shale division of BHP, the world’s biggest miner.

Sky News has learnt that Shell and Blackstone, the private equity firm, have agreed to work together on an offer for the assets, which were put up for sale last summer by BHP amid pressure from an activist investor.

A joint offer from Shell and Blackstone would be only one of several credible proposals that BHP is expecting to receive for the US shale operations, according to banking sources.read more

Shell has spent the last three years reinventing itself for the energy future it sees in the coming decades. A few years back, Shell was a company struggling to find its footing. Exploration success was declining, as was daily liquids production. From the graph below you can see that the lack of success in exploration was starting to equate to reduced production. An oil company’s life can be measured in production, and they were not replacing the oil being produced. FULL ARTICLEread more

Ron Bousso, Dmitry Zhdannikov: FEBRUARY 20,2018
LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) will expand deepwater output and turn a profit from its shale production in coming years as both together will help the oil major cope with a world of low crude prices, the head of its oil and gas production said on Tuesday.

Shell’s deepwater production in Brazil, Nigeria, the Gulf of Mexico is much bigger and more profitable, but the firm sees the nimble, fast-returns U.S. onshore shale as an engine for growth.

“We can see strong (shale) production growth, strong cash surpluses that gives us a balance in our portfolio where you can ramp investment up and down, you can moderate that, very unlike deepwater which is quite chunky,” Andy Brown told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the IP Week conference.read more

Here, the prize is condensate, an ultra-light oil that’s perfect for diluting the heavy tar-sands crude for which Alberta is known. More locally produced diluent would be a plus for Canadian companies that now depend on the U.S. — and for communities like Fox Creek that are feeling the economic benefits along with fracking-linked earthquakes. More of both may be in the offing as drillers flock in Chevron’s wake into the Duvernay region.read more

A pump jack in a Permian Basin oil field in West Texas. The area has been a focus of the shale drilling boom.Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America

HOUSTON — A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump. The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry. Overcoming three years of slumping prices proved the resiliency of the shale boom. Energy companies and their financial backers were able to weather market turmoil — and the maneuvers of the global oil cartel — by adjusting exploration and extraction techniques. FULL ARTICLEread more

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago. And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.FULL ARTICLEread more

Once good for 20% of the government revenue and extra influence in Europe, now a national blight: the natural gas extraction in Groningen. The crane is getting closer and closer. But when the earth stops shaking, nobody knows.

€ 265 billion: Total revenue from Dutch natural gas revenues in the period 1960-2013 amounted to approximately € 265 billion.

The Groningen field was a jewel in the Shell portfolio.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch equivalent of the Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad under the headline:

If you produce gas, you do not actually have to do anything

By Carel Grol

Harry Klevering (68) can still remember the arrival of the gas. About eight years old, he was the youngest of a family of thirteen from the Groningen village of Spijk, when the gas bubble was discovered in Slochteren in the late 1950s. Soon after, the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM) visited his house, the company that still lives a life later on gas. To install free gas pipes. Tightly over the plinth, even though the tubes were plastic.

This Tuesday afternoon Klevering is in the office of Centrum Veilig Wonen in Loppersum. He just reported damage. He has lived in the same house for 24 years. Red bricks with a pointed roof, on the water. It is the second time that he has suffered damage. On Tuesday there were two explosions and then it felt like the house was falling.read more

Printed below is an English translation of an article published by the Dutch equivalent of the Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad under the headline “Shell is fully committed to oil and gas from shale“.

Shale gas and shale oil may then have a negative sound in Europe and hardly play a role, governments in the US, Canada, China and Argentina do see a lot of it. Shell hopes to benefit from this favorable investment climate in the coming years, especially now that the company has drastically reduced the costs of extracting shale gas and oil in recent years.read more

Oil major’s disposals continue with stake in Dutch wind farm

The growth of Royal Dutch Shell’s (LON:RDSA) oil and gas operations in the next decade will depend on shale production, the company’s chief executive has told the Financial Times. In a separate development, Reuters reports that the energy major has inked a deal to offload a stake in a Dutch wind farm.

Shell’s share price has been little changed this morning, having inched 0.04 percent lower to 2,529.00p as of 08:24 GMT. The group’s shares are marginally outperforming the broader UK market, with the benchmark FTSE 100 index currently standing 0.15 percent lower at 7,712.82 points.read more

According to the newspaper, van Beurden sees “chemicals, electricity and biofuels as key sectors for Shell’s long-term future”. Depending on the price of oil in the 2020s, the CEO said, the oil major would probably want to continue investing in shale “because we will really want to grow this business quite quickly”.

Van Beurden said Shell has been working hard in the past few years to reduce shale production costs, and with “a little bit of help from the oil price going up, we now see that we can significantly accelerate investment into this opportunity”.read more

The growth of Royal Dutch Shell’s oil and gas operations in the next decade will depend on shale production, its chief executive has said, in the latest sign of western energy groups pinning their hopes for expansion on those “unconventional” resources. Ben van Beurden told the Financial Times that he saw chemicals, electricity and biofuels as key sectors for Shell’s long-term future… FULL FT ARTICLE

Companies like Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp.historically invested tens of billions of dollars over many years to develop huge reserves in isolated areas like northern Alberta, Kazakhstan or in the middle of the ocean. Shale is different. A tight-oil well could be drilled within a year for a few million dollars. As prices fell, more companies jumped in with more investment. Now, shale regions that were barely a blip on world markets a decade ago are expected to pump 7.5 million barrels a day in four years, and output probably won’t peak until after 2025… FULL ARTICLEread more

Shell, in an initiative called “iShale,” has marshaled technology from a dozen oilfield suppliers, including devices from subsea specialist TechnipFMC Plc that separate fracking sand from oil and well-control software from Emerson Electric Co, to bring more automation and data analysis to shale operations.

Ernest Scheyder: NOVEMBER 28, 2017

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Shale oil engineer Oscar Portillo spends his days drilling as many as five wells at once – without ever setting foot on a rig. Part of a team working to cut the cost of drilling a new shale well by a third, Portillo works from a Royal Dutch Shell Plc office in suburban Houston, his eyes darting among 13 monitors flashing data on speed, temperature and other metrics as he helps control rigs more than 500 miles (805 km) away in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oilfield. FULL ARTICLEread more

SHELL BLOG

Comments

Bogus Group: Further to my post on this blog, 28 August'17, there may be some interest an an article in yesterday's Upstream "Trial set for clash of LNG players".

TotallyHackedOff: Shell - as I am sure with many global super majors- is heavy with narcissists at all levels. Lots of people like Trump rollicking around- get in their way and you’re a gonner! See you later Rexy baby!

TotallyHackedOff: In reply to Bonus Group and Another Concerned Employee- its clear reading from your posts that Shell and BG shared many business cultural similarities making the tie-up an obvious one. I know of a few Shell employees who resigned, joined BG and are now back at Shell again- it stinks of a plant/trojan horse ending! It is well known that Shell has an 'inner circle' and if you find yourself outside that as many of the technical folk do, you don't stand a chance. Its all a bit wink, wink nudge, nudge. I even remember one manager (now a VP of something) telling me how I needed to 'read between the lines' which made me think it was all a load of bollocks and how the politically adept arse kissers rose through the ranks blissfully unaware of how their actions impacted their colleagues. The alpha men and women were all the same- keen to get ahead at anyones expense and doing secret backroom deals. Its one ginormous playground and the bullies will win as they are keeping the other bullies in place.

Bonus Group: 'Another Concerned Employee'talks about Shell's 'scooby-doo' business priciples, BG's were just as opaque. If you asked someone in HR about policy you would be deflected to 'The Portal' and left to fend for yourself. Often the policies conflicted with each other and had no foundation in law. This was reflected in the hypocritical management 'do as I say, not as I do' policy.
The closest experience most of BG Senior Management had of oil rigs and platforms was reading about them in comic books. The Brasil Asset was a complete shambles with its 'Simple Simon' approach to geoscience and cappuccino lifestyle. Unfortunately, most of these overpaid sociopaths migrated to Shell and are waiting, mouth's open for their next bonus. Shell must be trying hard to find ways to cover up grotesque errors in reserves booked by this Asset. Hopefully, Shell's assurance process is better than BG's with its £2Bn failure.

Yet Another Concerned Employee: Carillion, for whom the bell tolls! Remarkable that a Shell Executive should have a finger in this pie with its aggressive auditing practices. More 'pulling the wool' over the shareholder's eyes. Were the auditors asleep at the wheel when this was happening? There should be a full investigation, and those responsible made accountable. Perhaps, sunny Brunei is a safe haven? I wonder what the extradition treaties between the UK and Brunei are?

Another Concerned Employee: Shell HR finds it easy to overlook its fake scooby doo business principles whenever it suits them. A number of staff implicit in OPL and the spin doctors trying desperately to cover up the crisis are still on payroll. It won't surprise anyone that Ceri was one of Brinded's loyal lapdogs during his dictatorship. Also no surprise she landed such a sweet job in Brunei.

Concerned Employee: Not sure if you know but..
Cerie Powell - ex EVP exploration now MD Brunei Shell Petroleum was a non exec director of Carillion (now in liquidation). She resigned once she was demoted to Brunei in 2016 (?) but given the news around the legacy issues involving Carillion, should she really hold a senior position in Shell Group ?

Bonus Group: It is understandable that a niche now exists in the market for a company similar to BG Group, but for Neptune Energy to set its aim at emulating and becoming like BG is nothing short of horrifying. Why anyone should wish to recreate the inept management, twisted HR policies and rancid technical half truths of BG Group in order to deceive the shareholders is beyond comprehension. If they do, then the Serious Fraud Office should be on the alert. Sammy 'two pools', whose past remit included selling Enterprise Oil to Shell, rather than ENI is made of sterner stuff. That said, his nuclear ambitions did fall somewhat short of those of Kim Yong Un. Let's wish Neptune Energy a long, scandal free future and greater integrity than bungling BG with its House of Cards and flamboyant ineptitude.

Bogus Group: Following the acquisition of Engie the Financial Times headline “Neptune Energy sets aim on being the next BG Group” may have sent a chill through some. To think there could possibly be a rise from the ashes is an alarming prospect
However there was some comfort in the company chairman statement “We have the opportunity to take the time to get it right”.
Hopefully this means their Ethics and Compliance foundation will actually be more than just another policy open to distortion by misconduct.

Bill Campbell: Is the New York City case against Oil Companies justifiable or just hot air?

Many, if not all prestigious US scientific journals estimate largest source of air pollution in US is caused by vehicle emissions. Current estimates that US has some 260 million automobiles and 11 million trucks. It is the daily emissions from these vehicles that are the cause of scientific concern. But anybody visiting Florida, and following a construction truck, will be familiar with black smoke in copious amounts emitting from the vertical exhaust pipe, sometimes it's so bad it can restrict your vision but Florida is not the only state of the US that does not require emission control, there are many more, monitoring for example (like a UK vehicle MOT) is not legally required or carried out.

So perhaps De Blasio should start suing these delinquent states.

In any case, I find the whole matter ludicrous in a country, where their President claims that human activity is not related in any way to global warming and appoints a head of EPA who is also so inclined (a man described by NY Times as an arsonist in the Fire Station) so why does Shell et all not call as witnesses in their defence the current EPA Director, or otherwise why does De Blasio not start by suing those states that allow millions of vehicles to pollute the atmosphere daily.
Bill

Bonus Group: Further to my last post on this blog. Sound Energy have now arranged a slap-up bean feast for their shareholders to be held on 15th February at Grace Hall, Leadenhall Street, London. Drinks at Carriages afterwards. Dress is formal so don't expect too energetic a food fight. Attendees must pay for their own tickets! All will be revealed about the new Coro strategy. You may recall that Sound shareholders will receive Coro shares as a result of the divestment of Sound's Italian assets. The question is whether Sound shareholders will end up in the soup.

Bonus Group: There are rumblings in the ether about Rockhopper Exploration plc having failed to perform Due Diligence with integrity in respect of their purchase of the Italian focused company Mediterranean Oil and Gas (MOG) in 2014, and in particular MOG's asset, the Ombrina Mare oil field.
Following the decision in February 2016 by the Ministry of Economic Development not to award the company a production concession covering the Ombrina Mare field, the company has considered its legal options with regard to obtaining damages and compensation from the Republic of Italy for breaching the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).
Could this have anything to do with the sudden and unexpected departure of Rockhopper's Chief Operating Officer, one 'Good Time' Fiona MacAuley? Fiona, a Chartered Geologist, started her career with Mobil North Sea Limited in 1985 and has subsequently held key roles in a number of leading oil and gas firms across large mid and small cap E&Ps including BG and Hess.
Fiona is now Chief Executive Officer of Echo Energy plc where Stephen Whyte (also ex BG) is a Non-Executive Director, previously having been Chairman of Sound Energy. Fiona will also become a Non-Executive Director of Saffron Energy plc. It is proposed that Saffron acquires Sound Energy's portfolio of Italian interests and permits through the acquisition by Saffron of Sound Energy Holdings Italy Limited (SEHIL). SEHIL holds all of Sound Energy's Italian oil and gas interests through its own wholly owned subsidiary, Apennine Energy SpA (APN). It is proposed that Saffron will be renamed Coro Energy plc.
This is yet another 'reverse takeover' by the Sound Energy/Echo Energy Team. The share options for the directors are raining on them like confetti. Could there be bonuses in store for the Directors of this association of companies where the paint is never allowed to dry?
Plenty of 'smoke and mirrors' and wool being pulled over the shareholders' eyes in this can of worms.

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